USB 16-servo controller Voltage

Hi…

I should get my servo controller either today or Monday, I love snail mail.

Anyway, my servo is 7.2V.
If I plug a 7.2V 2A into the servo controller 16 USB will it be OK.

I mean it will not kill the board or anything like that.

Please let me know before I fry my board. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank in advance

On the USB 16 servo controller, The big servo power screw terminals are only connected to the servo power pins. The electronics on the board get power from either the USB bus or the logic supply pin. SO, as long as your servos can handle 7.2V (and you get the polarity right) you will be fine.

Hope your controller comes today!

-Adam

Hello.

Adam’s reply is great. I just want to address a common misunderstanding about current and capacity.

You generally can’t plug “7.2V, 2A” into most things (a 3.6 ohm resistor is one thing where you could do it). Rather, you plug in 7.2 V, and some amount of current will flow, based on the circuit you have. The circuit includes the servos, so it’s quite complicated, and the current will vary depending on what your servos are doing.

You probably have a 2 Ah battery; Ah is amps times hours. That means that you should be able to supply 1 A for two hours, or 2 A for one hour, and so on. If you have 16 servos moving all the time, the current might be more like 10 A, which would give you around 5 minutes of operation. Usually, the faster you discharge, the less actual capacity you get. Also, your batteries will have limits on how much current they can deliver. A 10C rating is common and decent, and it means you can draw up to 10 times the number in the Ah rating (in other words, the unit on C would be 1/h). If your 2 Ah batteries can deliver 10C, that means the maximum current they can deliver is 20 A.

If, on the other hand, you have a DC power supply with a 2 A limit, it means it won’t give you more than 2 A. Since a normal servo can draw around 1 A under load, you wouldn’t be able to have more than two servos straining at a time.

- Jan